Sunday, 2 October 2016

Yona of the Yawn: Review of Yona of the Dawn Ep. 13-24 (2014-5 anime)

[Spoilers for the whole of Yona of the
Dawn.]

I overestimated Yona
of the Dawn. Watching the first half, I saw potential. Yes, the plot plodded,
the character dynamics had yet to bloom, and the show lacked conflict, but the
pieces were there. Alas, the writers never assembled the pieces. All they’ve
given us are flat characters in emotionally leaden scenes.

As Yona has found two of the four Dragons, she is halfway to
martialling a force against Soo-Won, her former-friend/betrayer. While
searching for the remaining Dragons, Yona uncovers a human trafficking
operation. With the help of some pirates, and a new friend, she must defeat the
slavers. Meanwhile, Soo-Won visits the down-on-it’s-luck Earth Clan.

This review will sound harsher than my one for the first
twelve episodes. This implies no plummet in quality from the series’ first half
to its second. Looking back, both halves are mediocre. At a distance, however,
one can miss this mediocrity. I liked the first half because it promised good
in later episodes. Yes, the quest was too easy-going, lacking in conflict and
urgency, but surely, surely events would swell as the series progressed. And,
yes, the characters only approached roundness, but with a few more episodes
surely they’d reach roundness. These promises unfulfilled, the first half is as
mediocre as the second.

Characters who once promised depth retreat to shallower
waters. Where once Yun seemed a brash but hardened boy, now he’s just bratty.
Where once Gija struggled with how he could not fulfil his life’s purpose,
protecting Yona, now he’s just ‘comically’ protective of her. Where once Hak
seemed a gruff, but dutiful, bruiser, now he’s just the tough guy. Where once
the Blue Dragon was a victim of stigmatisation, now he… Well, he just stands
silently in the background.

Can you spot the Blue Dragon, beneath the dullness?

But though boring, at least these characters don’t clog up
screen time. Yona, on the other hand, is front-and-centre. In my last review, I
complained her arc finishes six episodes in, leaving her nowhere to grow, and
thus little of interest to do. That’s still true. The show dangles hope for a
new arc, but stumbles in the execution. If in her first arc she grew from
dependent to independent, in the second she moves from mere self-sufficiency to
aiding others. This might have been compelling, except for two things. One, she
completes this arc without real threat of failing. Two, the obstacles in her
way are generic physical challenges. They reveal nothing about her character
specifically. For example, shimmying on a cliff’s edge is a challenge to any
one; it does not force her to struggle with her past and/or personality. The
copious screen time devoted to this arc dilutes it further.

A new character shows up, the Green Dragon, Jae-Ha, who had
potential. He treasures freedom, judging any who would dare control him as
monsters. Because his purpose in life, as a Dragon, is to serve Yona, his arc
could have been interesting. This belief of his suggests themes of freedom
versus duty, existence versus essence – themes the writers never explore. They
don’t even exploit the dramatic potential of a reluctant party member. The
White Dragon’s community raised him to anticipate serving Yona. The Blue Dragon
had nothing left for him but to serve Yona. How would Yona win over a dragon
who hated serving her? Easily, it turns out. Jae-Ha just needs to meet her
once, see that she’s not an elderly, male arsehole, and suddenly he joins her
side. He resists at first, but not enough, given how much he claimed to value
his autonomy.

Flat characters can be interesting. Most of Dickens’
characters were flat. The problem comes when the writers want us to feel for
these characters. When emotional climaxes happen to nothing characters, it’s
like multiplying zero. On top of that, the writers don’t justify the emotional
moments. Little in the characters’ pasts justifies the way they feel in the
moment. One character tells Yona she feels Yona is the daughter she never had.
They’ve known each other for a few days. It’s not just that the series’
emotional moments fail; Yona fails in
way that makes the audience feel manipulated. When a writer tries to make us
feel for a flat character, they point at nothing, while telling us it’s
something, and expect to fool us.

There is so much thwarted potential in this show. I feel the
writers brainstormed a bunch of interesting concepts, parallels, and themes,
but when it came to scripting they said, ‘Well, I can’t be bothered fleshing
these out.’ For example, the series criticises Yona’s father’s, the deceased
king’s, commitment to peace. His pacifism lead him to cede land to satisfy
aggressors, hurting commoners. Yona discovers this soon after she pledges to
carry on her father’s legacy. Now she sees that legacy’s stain, but not in a
facile King-Il-was-really-an-arsehole way. No, the trait which stains his
legacy, is the same trait that Yona admires: his love of peace. This could have
been interesting, if the writers hadn’t forgotten it as soon as they mentioned
it.

The most disappointing bit of unfulfilled potential is the
slavery arc. Latent in this arc were subversive themes and character parallels,
but unfortunately the arc depicts no slavery. Oh, yes, the series shows us
trafficked women and calls it slavery – but this isn’t slavery. This is
Generic-Evil-011, written only to make the antagonist unambiguously evil. The
problems are two-fold. First, when you depict slavery, but handle it with
kid-gloves, the whole thing rings hollow. I don’t think of how evil the villain
is; I think of how the writers fail to confront the brutality of slavery. I
understand the writers want to keep things light, but then I would suggest –
don’t depict slavery. Why not Generic-Evil-024, crippling taxes?

Second, the show’s use of slavery squanders the parallels
with the Dragons, Jae-Ha specifically. The evil central to slavery (i.e. the
evil that no amount of ‘kind treatment’ can undo) is violating the slave’s right
to selfhood and self-determination. To put it in Kantian terms, to enslave a
person reduces them to a mere means, rather than an end-in-themselves. This
sounds a lot like Jae-Ha’s view of Dragons, beings condemned to serve the
Dragon King. Why didn’t he raise this when he, Yona, and the pirates planned to
liberate the slaves? Why didn’t the writers find some way to make this parallel
explicit? I know a critic shouldn’t write a new story in the middle of a
review, but I only write this new story because Yona’s writers stopped writing it halfway. They must have seen the
parallels. I can only assume it intimidated them; the implications of likening
the Dragons to slaves would taint the show’s light-heartedness. As I said
before, if you’re going to ignore the implications of depicting slavery, don’t
do it at all.

At once charming and serpentine

Although not faultless, Soo-Won is the only interesting part
of the show. As the only round character, he vivifies the scenes surrounding
him. His visit to the Earth Tribe may have lagged, but it entertained. From it,
we learn Soo-Won’s modus operandi.
Despite his iron-fisted coronation speech, he plays a spiritual successor to
King Il, a sheltered monarch with more joviality than sense. Under this veil of
fecklessness, he cures economic and diplomatic woes, not through policy, but by
orchestrating happy ‘accidents’. He is a Machiavellian posing as a bleeding
heart. Although the ultimate goal of such play-acting is unclear, we sense he
has a goal.

How fitting that Soo-Won should initiate the only good
episode in the series, episode twenty-three. This episode works emotionally,
narratively, and tone-wise. Unlike the forced emotional manipulations of the
series’ proper, this episode has genuinely affecting moments. Yona and
Soo-Won’s reunion has weight. The viewer can empathise with Yona’s shell-shock
after the meeting. What elevates these moments above the others in the series
is that we can understand where they come from. In these moments, Yona and
Soo-Won are not nothing characters affected by nothing moments; we know how
their pasts and personalities inform these moments. The series reminds us that
Soo-Won had no idea what Yona had been doing. He thought she was dead. This is
not a confrontation of enemies. Rather, it is Yona confronting an enemy, and
Soo-Won discovering a former friend still lives. As Yona’s entire quest aims to
defeat Soo-Won, meeting him shatters her. Soo-Won unintentionally forces Yona
to realise he is the same person he was before. He killed her father, but his
kindness, his concern, all those things she liked in him, still exist. Distant
from him, she could ignore that, but now she must confront what the goal of her
quest entails.

Only time I laughed at one of these

The goofspots – those copious hyper-deformed punchlines
littered into non-comedic scenes – actually work in this episode. They do not
jar with the tone. As the show plays Yona’s shell-shock for light-laughs, the
goofspots fit. I know it’s a small thing, but this shows what a competent
episode this is. In a different world maybe all the episodes would be this
good.

Someone's using After Effects for the first time

Not even this episode is perfect. The party’s departure from
their new friends runs too long and smacks of soppiness. It is played, in part,
for laughs, but it earns so few laughs that it’s just soppy. The episode
stumbles stylistically, when it portrays a flashback as a screen within a
screen. Don’t remind me that, in this fantasy world, I’m looking at a
rectangular screen. Why didn’t they just let the flashback take up the whole
screen?

Episode twenty-three perfectly ends the series, which is why
it’s a shame it doesn’t. Episode twenty-four resurrects every gripe I have with
the series. It reminds me how dull all the characters are. It even introduces a
new character, whose singular character trait is he acts like a clown except
when he has to speak solemnly. This episode mainly sets up the second series.
Those moments are so brief, however, the writers could have shifted them to the
previous episode, and allowed the series to end on a bang.

And that OP. When I’m watching a medieval fantasy, I don’t
want to hear techno. I can’t ignore it; the moment the opening credits start,
the music starts, too late for me to skip past it. It seems a small thing, but
it encapsulates this series. Something as fundamental as tone is broken, every
episode, by the show’s own opening theme.

I won’t watch the second series. It may get better, but I
doubt another twenty-four episodes will salvage it. Again, the series does not
get worse in its second half; its second half reveals how empty its potential
was. Don’t bother with Yona of the Dawn.